The Bible Study Hour

Guest (Male): God is my rock. Psalm 18 is a psalm of thanksgiving in which David is looking back on his life, praising and thanking God for his steadfast faithfulness. Today on the Bible Study Hour with Dr. James Boice, we'll get a closer look at David's thankful heart as we continue our study of the Psalms.

Welcome to the Bible Study Hour, a radio and internet broadcast with Dr. James Boice, preparing you to think and act biblically. Today, in the first half of Psalm 18, David is looking back on his life, recognizing all the ways that God has rescued him, preserved him, and remained faithful to him. Let's listen together to this psalm of thanksgiving as David counts his blessings. If you have your Bible, turn to Psalm 18, verses 1 to 24.

Dr. James Boice: Psalm 18 is the first long psalm in the Psalter. There are others, of course. Everybody knows of Psalm 119; it’s the longest chapter in the entire Bible. But this is the first really long psalm that we've encountered so far. The longest up to this point has been Psalm 9. Psalm 9 had 20 verses, but Psalm 18 has 50 verses. Because it's so long, I'm going to treat it in two parts, dealing with the first half of it in this study and then continuing with the second half in a subsequent study.

There are a number of interesting things about this psalm. For one thing, it's a thanksgiving psalm. I spoke last time about the various categories or types or genres. Thanksgiving psalms, strangely enough, surprisingly, thank God for something. And generally, what they thank God for is some remarkable deliverance. The deliverances follow some particular prayer for deliverance. And those prayers for deliverance generally take the form in the Psalms of what the scholars call a lament. So often you have a thanksgiving psalm that follows a lament. And that's exactly what you have here. We were looking at Psalm 17 the last time, and we saw that that was a lament. David is in trouble, his enemies have surrounded him, and he's asking God to intervene and save him from his foes. Now we come to the 18th Psalm, and we find that he's thanking God for exactly that kind of a deliverance.

This is also a kingship psalm. It shows why it's sometimes difficult to categorize them. A kingship psalm is a psalm that praises God for his blessing upon the king. Quite often, a kingship psalm looks forward to the king to come, that is the Messiah, and this psalm is no exception. Toward the end, we find a verse, verse 49, that the Apostle Paul uses in the book of Romans in reference to Jesus Christ. He has four verses drawn from the Old Testament in the 15th chapter of Romans to prove that God sent Jesus to be the savior of the Gentiles as well as the Jews. And the first of those four verses from the Old Testament that he gives is this 49th verse: "Therefore I will praise you among the nations," that is not just in Israel but among the Gentile nations, "O Lord; I will sing praises to your name." So we have a biblical justification, a New Testament justification for treating this psalm in a messianic manner. So you have all these things going together, and it means that the psalm is a rich one indeed.

Now, when we look at it, the very first thing we notice is that it has an exceptionally long title: "For the director of music. Of David the servant of the Lord. He sang to the Lord the words of this song when the Lord delivered him from the hand of all his enemies and from the hand of Saul. He said..." and then it goes into the psalm. It's helpful because when we look at this and read it in terms of his deliverance from Saul and go back to the Old Testament to see the particulars to which that might be referring, we discover something quite interesting. We discover that what this is referring to is all of the events of David's life as recorded in First and Second Samuel.

And what is more, and very striking, when we come to the 22nd chapter of Second Samuel, we find precisely this psalm. It's all there, all of it. Moreover, this little title that I've just read actually is the introduction to it in Second Samuel. So Second Samuel 22, verses 1 and 2, are the words of the title I just read. Now, that's quite helpful to our understanding of it because that chapter in Second Samuel comes toward the end of David's life. Immediately after this, you have a little section which is identified in some of our Bibles as David's final words. Now, it's a couple chapters after this before we actually get the death of David, but these are the last things that David said.

So here we have this psalm which, by its place in Second Samuel, obviously is a summation of David's blessings received from God during the course of a long, long lifetime of service. And so it has to be taken in that way. What we find in those books of Samuel is that David had been delivered from a number of things, and that's what this psalm talks about. He had been delivered from Saul, for example. There were many years early in his life when Saul was still on the throne. And even though David had been anointed by Samuel to be the king, the one God had chosen to replace Saul, Saul was still there.

And what was more significant, David was emerging as a leader in Israel. The people recognized that, and Saul was jealous of his leadership abilities. More than once, when David was still at the court of Saul, serving there as other notables in the kingdom did, Saul tried to kill him; he threw his spear at him on several occasions. And when David finally had to flee Jerusalem, first of all to the land of the Philistines where he lived for a time, and then back into his own land where he hid in the wilderness, the cave of Adullam and then other wilderness fortresses, Saul pursued him and tried to kill him again and again on many occasions.

David was delivered by God on those occasions. The stories tell us that there were times when God brought Saul within David's grasp. David could have killed him if he had chosen to do so, but he said he wouldn't lift up his hand against the Lord's anointed. David spared Saul, and God spared David. And so when you get to the end of First Samuel, you find there the death of Saul after a disastrous battle with the Philistines, and pretty soon you find David exalted to the throne. So he had deliverance in those areas.

And then he had deliverance from Israel's many enemies. Once David became the king, it was his responsibility to fight the battles of the people against the enemies roundabout. And in Second Samuel 8, you have a listing of some of those battles. David was victorious against the Philistines to the west, against the Arameans of Damascus to the north, against the Edomites and the Moabites to the east, and all of that is described in a summary form in the chapters there that precede this psalm.

And finally, in the chapters immediately preceding this, you have the account of the rebellion of David's son Absalom against his father. Absalom tried to turn the people away from his father. He led a rebellion. He was successful to the degree that David actually had to flee Jerusalem with his armies, those who were loyal to him, into the wilderness, hiding again in the wilderness fortresses where he had hid so many years earlier from King Saul. And eventually, his armies had to fight a battle against the armies of Absalom. The armies of Absalom were defeated. Absalom himself was killed, although David said afterwards that he had rather it had been he that had died than his son.

Now, it's at the end of those accounts, those chronicles of his life, that this great psalm comes. So what you have here is David looking back over a long lifetime of service and praising God for his deliverance in all these respects. Now, there are different ways of analyzing the psalm or dividing it up. I think a very helpful way is to find six different parts here. I'm going to look at three of them in this study and then the next three, that is the second half of the psalm, in the study that follows this. It's not difficult to recognize an initial section, section one. It's verses 1 through 3 because in these verses, David addresses himself to God and praises him.

The very first verse says, "I love you, O Lord, my strength," and then he begins to use a series of metaphors that capture for him what God has been to him over these long years of his life. They fall into two categories. Some of them are military: God has been his shield, the horn of his salvation, his deliverer. Some of them refer to the years of his hiding when he was a refugee and had to flee his enemies, and there God was his refuge. And so he talks about God as his rock, his fortress, his refuge, and his stronghold.

The interesting thing about this is the repetition of that word "rock." He calls God his rock. You find it there in verse 2 twice, and you find it again later on in verses 31 and 46. Those verses make a nice sequence. You could preach a sermon on the four verses, each one giving you a point. First of all, the Lord is my rock. Secondly, my God is my rock; he makes it even more personal at that point. Verse 31: "Who is a rock except our God?" He addresses that question to others, and finally at the very end of the psalm, verse 46: "Praise be to my rock." Those verses and that image, obviously, are the dominant theme of this psalm.

What does he mean when he's talking about God as his rock? Well, years ago, I read a very interesting article, a brief one, but a very interesting one by a great professor of classics at the University of Auckland, whose name is E.M. Blaiklock. He wrote a series of articles on biblical imagery for Eternity magazine, and one of these particular articles was on rock. And he talked about the significance that a rock had to people who lived in Bible lands. Rock doesn't mean very much to us, but in Bible lands, a rock was an important thing. Many of the biblical lands were arid, desert-like lands. And in the springtime, when the rains would come, out on the edge of the desert, a little carpet of green would spring up, but it wouldn't last long. As soon as the rains stopped and the sun beat down mercilessly, as it does in those hot lands, that little patch of green would be burnt out, and within a very short time, it would be covered over again by sand.

But set a rock in the wilderness, and in the shelter of the rock, that little patch of green would thrive, and in certain circumstances could actually become an oasis. Now, that image is picked up in the Bible. Isaiah refers to the king as the shadow of a mighty rock in the barren land. A king who was faithful to God would be the kind of strong person in whose shadow weaker people could thrive and prosper. And just as those who were members of the kingdom could thrive in the shadow of the king, so the king thrived in the shadow of his God. And that's what David is talking about here. God was his rock, and in the shadow of that great rock, David could prosper. That's one way the image is used.

Second way the image of a rock is used is as a refuge. And that is chiefly what David is talking about here. David, when he had to flee from Saul, fled into the wilderness, and because he knew every rock and path and cranny of the wilderness, he was able to retreat into areas that King Saul simply did not know about, and he was able to hide from him. The cave of Adullam was a great rock in which David hid, and there were undoubtedly many times during those years of flight when David would find himself perched on some high rock in the wilderness, looking down into the canyon below and watching his enemies as they tried to pursue him hopelessly. Now, God is also that kind of a rock for his people. He is a refuge. He is a rock in which we can hide.

That last picture, the picture of David standing up on a rock and looking down into the canyon below to see his enemies, also suggests the third of the ways the Bible refers to a rock, that is a rock as a sure foundation, a solid platform for one's feet. It's often used in the Bible in contrast with mire and clay. One of the psalms says that: "He has lifted me out of the mirey clay and has set my feet upon a rock and established my goings." Jesus talked about a rock in that manner at the very end of the Sermon on the Mount. He said the wise man is the man who builds his house upon a rock, and the foolish man is the man who builds his house upon sand. When the rains come, the sand just becomes a torrent, and the man who built his house there is swept away. But the one who builds on the rock, well, he's built on a solid foundation, and his house stands firm. Jesus said, "I'm that rock, and my teachings are that rock, and wise is the man who builds on me."

Now, when David is praising the Lord, as he does here in the first three verses of the psalm, he's praising God in each of those aspects. God is the one upon whom he can stand. God is secure. God is the one in whom he can hide. God is the one who protects him, provides a shadow so he can prosper in a hostile environment. And naturally, he's recommending all of that to us too.

The second section of this psalm is a longer section, beginning in verse 4 and, at least as I divide it up, extending through verse 19. Now here he's talking about God's deliverance. First three verses praise God. Now he is talking about the way in which God delivered him. And of course, this is the basis for his praise. He begins with a little subsection that describes his peril. Verses 4 through 6: "The cords of death entangled me; the torrents of destruction overwhelmed me. The cords of the grave coiled around me; the snares of death confronted me," and so on. "And in my distress, I called on the Lord." That is very similar to what we found in the earlier psalm. When we were looking at Psalm 17, we found that David was in just such a strait. Verses 10 through 12 of Psalm 17 describe it in different terms, but it's exactly the same thing. He's speaking of his enemies. He said, "They have callous hearts; they're speaking with arrogance. They've tracked me down, they surround me, they're trying to throw me to the ground. Why, they're like a lion that is hungry for its prey." And here in this psalm, he says in different words exactly the same thing. He says there were times in my life when I was in so much trouble, it was as if the cords of death had been wrapped around me, and I was certain to be overwhelmed and die unless the Lord had saved me. So in my distress, I called on him, and that's exactly what he did.

From the point of view of the poetry, the greatest section of this psalm is a section that begins with verse 7. It's really magnificent verse because here David pictures the Lord rising from his throne in heaven, parting the clouds, and coming down to rescue David in his distress amid all sorts of unusual phenomena like earthquakes and thunder and hail and dark clouds and things that would terrify his enemies. It's really great poetry and needs to be read as that.

But when we look at it closely and think about these images, we soon find that what David is doing here is not simply making these things up, but rather he's drawing upon the great history of God's dealings with the people in the years that preceded his own reign. For example, verses 7 through 11 are talking about God's appearance on Mount Sinai when he gave the law through Moses. All of those terms there: the trembling and quaking of the earth, the shaking of the mountains, the smoke, the dark clouds—all of that is part of the description of God's theophany on Mount Sinai in the days of Moses. And we know that that was common imagery among the people because the author of the book of Hebrews in the New Testament even picks it up and says the same thing, speaking about the mountain that quaked and the darkness and the clouds, so terrifying, he said, that even Moses—he reports Moses as saying—"I exceedingly fear and quake." So that's what David is referring to there.

And in verses 12 through 14, you find that what he's talking about are some of the manifestations of God's power at the time of the Jewish conquest of Canaan under Joshua. He talks about hailstones and lightning. The only place in the Old Testament I know that hailstones are part of a manifestation of God is in the great victory of Joshua and his armies against the southern confederacy, which is recounted in the 10th chapter of Joshua. So he's referring to that here. And then at the very end, in verse 15, where he talks about the valleys of the sea being exposed, he's obviously talking about the Exodus when God parted the Red Sea so the people could pass over on dry land. And perhaps he's talking about the entrance into Canaan as well, when God parted the waters of the Jordan so the people could advance against Jericho.

You see, what he's saying here is not merely what we might if we were searching around for poetic language to describe God in some exalted way. He's drawing upon what God actually did in the past, even though, as we know, God didn't do any of these things specifically in a literal sense for David. But what he's saying is, you see that God who did all those things for Moses and Joshua and during the period of the judges is my God, and it's proper to say in a certain sense that he has done exactly that for me. I think Spurgeon had it right when he wrote in his comments on the psalm: David has in his mind's eye the glorious manifestations of God in Egypt, at Sinai, and on different occasions to Joshua and the judges, and he considers that his own case exhibits the same glory and power and goodness, and that therefore he may accommodate the descriptions of the former displays of the divine majesty into his own hymn of praise. And of course, that's exactly what he's doing.

Now, this means something else too, and it's what we saw also when we were looking at Psalm 17. You'll recall when we were looking at Psalm 17 that I pointed out that some of the language referring to God's deliverance is the language of the covenant. You find it drawn from two of the songs of Moses in the Old Testament: the one found in Exodus 15 and the second one in Deuteronomy 32. So when he uses that language, the language of the covenant, picking images up from those two songs, what he's saying is: this covenant God is my God; the God of Moses is my God too. And he's doing exactly the same thing here, although he's doing it in different ways. Here he's using the language of the great theophanies of the Old Testament when God appeared in power to give his people victory. And he's saying: this God, this God who appeared to Moses and to Joshua and to the others, is my God as well. I stand in that tradition.

And what I need to say as a minister who's preaching on this text is that that God is our God as well. Again, as far as I know, David himself did not literally experience any of these things. He didn't see some special manifestation of God in thunder and lightning and hail. God didn't intervene miraculously in any of his battles, so far as we know. He won them by the power of God, but not miraculously. And yet the God who was with him is exactly the same God, for there is no other, as the one who was with these other great Old Testament figures, and that is our God today. The God who delivered them delivers us. So what David says here can be said about our own experience as well.

Well, verses 16 and following talk about it. He has described the descent of God to his aid; he now says what happened: "He reached down from on high and took hold of me; he drew me out of deep waters. He rescued me from my powerful enemy, from my foes, who were too strong for me." Later on in this psalm, in the section we're going to look at next time, we'll find that he does it all over again. He's described God's intervention to save him in the verses I've just talked about, that is 4 through 19, but beginning in verse 25 through verse 45, he talks about that same deliverance. Only the second time around, he's doing it from his perspective rather than from God's. And all this special language, this highly poetical language of the manifestation of God in clouds and glory and thunder and earthquakes vanishes, and what he's really talking about is his victories. But you see how those things go together. He's saying it's really one and the same thing. God operates in many different ways, but he accomplishes the same thing for his people.

Now, the third section of this and the last of the sections we're going to look at—there are three more we'll look at next time—is verses 20 through 24. And to title that section, I would call it why God spared David. Now, the first section is praise to God, the second is a description of David's deliverance by God. Now we have an explanation of why God spared him. And once again, we're pointed back to the 17th Psalm. What he says here is that God spared him because of his righteousness.

I'll read it: "The Lord has dealt with me according to my righteousness; according to the cleanness of my hands he has rewarded me. For I have kept the ways of the Lord; I have not done evil by turning from my God. All his laws are before me; I have not turned away from his decrees. I have been blameless before him and have kept myself from sin. The Lord has rewarded me according to my righteousness, according to the cleanness of my hands in his sight." That is just what we saw in Psalm 17. I said there he was giving reasons why God should answer him. In Psalm 17, he's asking for the deliverance. In Psalm 18, he's thanking God for it, but the reason is the same. Psalm 17 says, "Though you probe my heart and examine me at night, though you test me, you will find nothing; I have resolved that my mouth will not sin," and so on.

Now, that does suggest a problem to us, and the problem is this: if this psalm really comes toward the end of David's life, as we know it did because of its association with Second Samuel—you find it in the 22nd chapter, almost the very last words of King David—the question is: how could he say that in view of his sin with Bathsheba and against her husband Uriah? We might say, you see, if we were reading Psalm 17, it's not dated. Well, this is something that he must have prayed early in his life, in his pristine days of innocence. He could perhaps say, though he doesn't claim to be sinless, "I have kept your word, I have held to your paths, my feet have not slipped." But toward the end of his life, how could he say, "My feet have not slipped"? Isn't this blatant arrogance or lying on David's part?

Well, I think the answer to that question—and it is a good one—comes in the verses that follow that we're going to look at next time. What he goes on to talk about in the verses that follow is a general principle: "To the faithful you show yourself faithful, to the blameless you show yourself blameless, to the pure you show yourself pure, but to the crooked you show yourself shrewd. You save the humble but you bring low those who are haughty." I think it's in view of that general principle that we have to understand what he says before. He's not saying in these verses that any follower of God is blameless because, of course, none of us are; he knew that he was not himself, even before the sin with Bathsheba. He's not even saying that he is sinless at the time he utters the prayer. But what he's saying is that in a general way, God does reward righteousness, and if you go in the way of sin or unrighteousness, certain inevitable and undesirable consequences follow.

It doesn't handle every case. You take the case of Job; you say, what about that? There was a righteous man who suffered many things. In the end, of course, God vindicated Job and rewarded him. In the end, it worked out all right, but there were many long months, perhaps years, in between when things didn't seem to be going very well for him and the principle didn't seem to hold true. But what David is saying is that in a general way, that's true. And if you had said to David, "Yes, David, but what about Bathsheba and that? How can you bring that up?" David would say that was a shameful episode, and I've repented of it, but it makes the point because as a result of that sin, I experienced many difficult things in my life. The principle that I'm talking about in verse 25 and following I experienced as well. When I fell into sin, I suffered for it. Generally speaking, the tenor of my life has been to seek the way of God, and God has blessed me for doing that.

I want to say that to you as well. You and I have within us the same capacity for sin that David did, and many of us have done exactly that, or perhaps things that were even worse. But generally, you see, if we are repenting of the sin and trying to follow in God's ways, God does bless. God doesn't bring up the sin against us and hold it over us and hammer us on the head with it again and again as if he were going to say, "Oh, you sinned back there; you sin, you aren't useful to me anymore." It's not that way. God always takes us right where we are. He rejoices when we repent of sin, and he picks us up and he establishes us upon the rock once again, lifting us out of the mirey clay of our own transgressions and blesses us and makes us a blessing to others, as David himself so obviously was.

Now, we're going to go on and look at some more aspects of that in the second of these two studies of the psalm, but I'd like to close by reference to something else. One of the great sermons of the great American evangelist D.L. Moody was on the theme "Their rock is not as our rock." It wasn't based on this psalm, but rather from a verse from Deuteronomy 32. And the verse that Moody had in his Bible, the King James Bible, went something like this: "Their rock is not as our rock, even our enemies being judges."

The part of that verse that intrigued Moody was that last part: "Even our enemies being judges." And he said when you consult those who are not Christians and ask them whether that in which they trust is adequate, they themselves confess—you don't need the testimony of Christians—but rather they themselves confess that their rock is not as our rock. In this particular sermon, Moody talked about atheists and pantheists and infidels; those were the great words for talking about unbelievers in those days. And he went through each one, and he told stories, and he came to the end and he said, "I have never known an infidel to die happily." When they die, he said, if they don't find a rock to hold on to, there is no comfort in their atheism or in their pantheistic philosophy or in their unbelief. And if they call for anyone to be with them, the person they call is a Christian minister. Their rock is not as our rock, even our enemies being judges.

And that, I think, is the message of the psalm. You and I go through life and we sin again and again. We sometimes sin dreadfully. But when we point not to our failures or even our strengths, but to our rock, it is our confession that our rock is not as their rock. Our rock is a rock which we have found firm through all the changing vicissitudes of life and all the temptations of life, and that rock has never failed us. And when we come at the end of our days, as David did, and look back over life, we will be able to say, as David does in this psalm, "Who is the rock except our God?" And the answer is there is none. And we will conclude as he himself does: Well then, praise be to the rock, even our God.

Our Father, we thank you for this great hymn of David's, this great testimony to your blessing and keeping power in his life over many long, long years of service. Many of us are at that stage in life; we look back over a long life, and we confess that you've been faithful. Many of us are young; we look ahead to a lifetime of service if you spare us to do that. And yet, whether we look forward or whether we look back, our testimony is the same: our rock is not as their rock; our rock is a solid rock, a rock on which we can build, a rock of refuge, one in whom we can hide and upon whom we can stay. Our Father, help us to show that by the way we live and by the words we speak, for Jesus' sake. Amen.

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